The first online community I was a member of was the now defunct Helium.com. I think there’s another company with that name now.
Anyway, that’s where I caught the community bug. The site was for writers and I thought I wanted to be a writer. But, when I found the community, I spent all my time in there. I read each and every post in the community and refreshed the page to see new ones! It was years before I found out that community management was a thing.